Document Type

Article

Publication Date

Spring 2024

Abstract

Digital technology has changed the landscape young people face as they come of age. It has changed how children interact with their parents, schools, community organizations, and the state. Despite many benefits, digital technologies that employ data collection, algorithms, and artificial intelligence pose significant risks for the next generation. Private businesses can collect, use, and sell a child’s data in ways never imagined by their families. Information collected by third parties with good intentions can be stolen through data breaches. Through faulty algorithms, websites can make inaccurate assumptions about young people’s interests, teachers can make inaccurate assumptions about a student’s potential achievement, and the state can make inaccurate assumptions about a child’s risk to engage in criminal activity. It can also feed young people information that is harmful to their physical or psychological well-being. Meanwhile, current efforts in the United States that promise to protect children online threaten to undermine their right to privacy.

United States federal and state laws are ill-equipped to truly offer children online privacy protections. There are few legal remedies available to young people whose data is used in malicious ways. The remedies that do exist are insufficient to simultaneously safeguard children while respecting privacy as young people mature. To that end, this Article seeks to explore how current laws centered on children’s online protection are inadequate, and why the obsession with keeping young people safe online often curtails their need for agency and autonomy. It offers a cogent path forward to guide federal and state policymakers as they update children’s online privacy protection law.

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